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February 28

anyone know Russian?

Can anyone tell me what the "Barynya" song actually says? Lyrics here: [1]. They read:

“ Барыня, барыня, сударыня барыня...

Барыня, барыня, сударыня барыня!
Приехала барыня из деревни во Москву;
Становилась барыня во палатах каменных.
Мимо тех ли ведь палат шла дорожка хороша;
По той по дороженьке офицер часто ходил,
Офицер часто ходил, на окошечко глядел.
У барыни, барыни глаза разгорелися,
Глаза разгорелися, вся кровь воскипелася.
«Офицерик молодой, побывай ко мне, душа!»
У барыни, барыни, сударыни барыни,
Офицерик побывал, со барышней посидел,
У барыни посидел, с нею время препровел.
Чаем-кофием поила, в уста его целовала,
К нежну сердцу прижимала, таки речи говорила:
«Я счастлива бы была, кабы век с тобой жила!»

”

Thanks! 109.128.222.233 (talk) 01:22, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I won't translate, since it's too long, but I want to point out that this is far from canonical lyrics (there aren't any, really, since it's a folk song). It may or may not be the original lyrics, but these would be unfamiliar to an average Russian who is familiar with the song. But, briefly, it's a song about a love affair between upper-class people, but the song is clearly written by a peasant. --99.113.32.198 (talk) 02:13, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

yeah I noticed it's not actually what my song is saying (I can sound out cyrillic). Could you link a more 'canonical' version of the lyrics? Finding such is beyond my ability... 109.128.222.233 (talk) 04:38, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I won't attempt a translation either, not because it's too long, but because my Russian is really shaky. From what I was told, after hearing the song performed by the Sharomov Vocal Ensemble, the chastushka lyrics can vary, and in fact that is part of their appeal. This link has some information, and the "Saturday Affair" version in Russian and English. And "сударыня" ("sudarynya") means "madam", the link doesn't translate that part. (We also have a short article on barynya, though it doesn't answer your question directly). ---Sluzzelin talk 08:51, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Summary of the song as posted here: an officer looked at a lady through the window, she was excited, she called him, he came to her, they enjoyed each other's company. Local colour: they also drank tea and coffee together.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:50, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Muslim girl names

I'm writing a story and one of the characters is a Muslim girl. I don't speak Arabic, so I have no idea what to name her. --75.15.161.185 (talk) 02:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, you could check out wikt:Category:English female given names from Arabic... Lexicografía (talk) 02:50, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Or Category:Arabic feminine given names, Category:Iranian feminine given names, or Category:Turkish feminine given names here at Wikipedia, depending on the national background of the Muslim girl in your story. Pais (talk) 12:18, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I would add to the lists: List of American Muslims, Category:British_Muslims, if the story is set in the west. You could check the background of notable individuals to see if they match. --Colapeninsula (talk) 12:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Just because she's a Muslim doesn't mean she has to have an Arabic name... 86.179.119.44 (talk) 18:42, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. My cousin is a muslim girl (with one muslim parent) and has a perfectly Han Chinese, not-even-remotely-Arabic name and also a second perfectly English, not-even-remotely-Arabic name. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 19:46, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I think key Muslim female names would be Khadija, Fatima, Aisha, etc..., spellings in Latin letters depend on the country in question. --Soman (talk) 02:52, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

can past tense and present tense come togethor in a common written piece.

I have noticed in the writings of some extremely writers that they use past tense and present tense in the same article. I have also a read few stories where the narration is made with the help of both past tense and present tense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.243.44.210 (talk) 04:10, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Can you provide an example? Usage of tense varies a lot with context and what the speaker or writer is trying to convey. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't get the question. If you have noticed it, why are you asking whether it can happen? Looie496 (talk) 06:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Extremely what writers? -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 07:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Several different tenses can be used in one sentence; no problem: I saw your question, I am now typing a response, I will soon see the result.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 10:10, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that a sentence can have multiple tenses, but I would challenge someone to do that in an independent clause. That "sentence" above should ideally be separated by semicolons, making them clauses anyway. In general, mixing tenses in one clause or thought is ugly and a bit disconcerting to the reader. Badly written articles jump all over the place within paragraphs and I sometimes find that painful to read. Sandman30s (talk) 13:23, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I have read the above comments, and I am now fed up with the topic. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:32, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I think Shantavira's and Q Chris's examples are fine. What bugs me is when a careless author decides to use the historical present, then forgets he's doing so and lapses into the past tense for a few clauses, then suddenly remembers he's supposed to be using the historical present again. (In general, I find the use of the historical present in narrative an annoying affectation 9 times out of 10, but if you must use it, at least use it consistently.) Pais (talk) 14:42, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Nicely said, thanks. This is what I was thinking of but couldn't quite place it. Sandman30s (talk) 08:18, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Americanisms... again

OK just some random thoughts (sigh)... why do Americans say "math" and everyone else says "maths"? After all it's short for mathematics, not mathematic. Why do Americans drop the h in herb? Then you should be calling Herbie an 'urbie' :) Sandman30s (talk) 13:10, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

For the second one, it's because herb was borrowed from French herbe, which has a silent H (the H was dropped already in Vulgar Latin probably in the 1st century AD or so). The pronunciation with /h/ as heard in Britain is a spelling pronunciation (a non-historical pronunciation influenced by the spelling). For the first, it probably has to do with the fact that Americans treat mathematics (as well as other fields with apparently plural names like politics and linguistics) as grammatically singular: "Mathematics is a difficult subject", not "Mathematics are a difficult subject" (or even "Mathematics are difficult subjects"). One of the most salient differences between American and British English is in subject-verb agreement. Pais (talk) 13:25, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

British also treat mathematics as a single subject. I think the mathematic/mathematics is just a difference without reason after all Americans treat physics as a single subject without shortening it to physic. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:34, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Wait a minute, are you under the impression that Americans say mathematic? No, we don't. The short form is math, the long form is mathematics; both forms are construed as singular. --Trovatore (talk) 03:28, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The word "math" dates to at least 1847 according to the Oxford English Dictionary, while "maths" is attributed to only 1911. So the question is not why the Americans say "math" but why the British chose not to use a word that already existed. Similarly, the British only started pronouncing the "h" in herb in the 19th century; the U.S. pronunciation is the original. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 15:15, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Well the British already had a word "math" meaning a mowing (hence "aftermath"), and dating from 1305 or earlier. The British colloquial abbreviation (with the "s") is possibly borrowed from French who also retain the "s" and were using the abbreviation in the mid-1800s. (The French mathématiques is plural, of course.) Dbfirs 08:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, I think the fact that "mathematics" is a singular noun is the reason why the abbreviation is "math" in American English, not "maths". There's just no reason to keep the -s when the word is abbreviated, since the word is ultimately a single morpheme (it's {mathematics}, not {mathematic}-{s}). The form "maths" would make sense to me only if "mathematics" were also treated as a plural, so that {mathematic}-{s} is shortened to {math}-{s}, without any awkward cutting out of the middle of a morpheme. But that's just my American perspective! Voikya (talk) 15:19, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from Google, though, (at least some) Americans do use the analogous abbreviation "stats" for the discipline of statistics. Algebraist 15:48, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but statistics is sometimes construed as a plural noun; mathematics effectively never is. --Trovatore (talk) 23:22, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

"Mathematics" is usually singular, but was used as a plural as early as 1697 and as late as 1971 in OED citations. Dbfirs 08:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

In my (UK) experience it is still used occasionally as a plural - for example "The mathematics of the situation are such that....." Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:08, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, I meant in American usage. Just the same, I probably wouldn't object strongly to the example sentence, but I'd be very unlikely to produce it myself.

Statistics is an interesting case. It's true that, when used in the plural, it usually means something other than the field of study, something more like a collection of numbers. "He's one of those ballplayers whose statistics are more important to him than whether the team wins." And nevertheless, the field of study is more often shortened to stats rather than stat. --Trovatore (talk) 10:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually I'm going to take a WAG here and propose that the reason for the prevalence of stats for the field of study is a contamination from stats in the sense of sports, which most people learn about before they learn the academic discipline. --Trovatore (talk) 10:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

As others have said, the "h" in UK "herb" was inserted as a result of spelling pronunciation - and, like "hour", "heir", and "honour", it originally didn't have one. However, the re-introduction based on spelling has also occurred in "humble", "hotel", "habit", "horizon", "horrible", "host" etc., and all of these are pronounced in the same way by both British and American English; in fact, when you think of it, only a handful of all the Romance loans with originally mute H have preserved their H-less pronunciation in any kind of English. The preserved H-less words like "heir" and "herb" are the anomaly. BTW, contrary to the OP's suggestion, the name "Herbert" has nothing to do with herbs. Since it's of Germanic origin and French pronunciation tended to retain the Germanic Hs ("H aspiré") for quite some time, I guess it must have had an H in Norman French, and that H was safely delivered into English without further vicissitudes of fortune.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 16:35, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

In the UK, the re-introduction of initial 'h' pronunciation is not universal (yet). Many people, including myself, omit it when the first syllable is not stressed, and both speak and write 'an' rather than 'a' preceding it. Thus: "an [h]oTEL" but "a HORrible . . .", etc. This is/was perhaps more prevalent in the older members of the notionally better educated classes where knowledge of French is/was de rigueur. Single syllable words in this schema necessarily restore the 'h', but a few words like "heir" mysteriously buck the trend. Doubless a professional linguist would know why - off to peruse the archives at Language Log! 87.81.230.195 (talk) 16:54, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Good point, I'd forgotten about that (or rather about how it's connected to the whole thing). I don't think this is about knowledge of French, though: after all, you don't need to know Old Norman French to pronounce the first consonant in 'gentleman' correctly, and that sound phoneme didn't even exist in English before William the Conqueror turned up, AFAIK. Do you also "drop" the H sentence-initially (as in "Hotels are very useful..." or "Historically speaking, ...")?--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:36, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Touché! I do somewhat when speaking carelessly in my default inherited near-Cockney (my family was too peripetatic in my childhood for me to develop my own permanent regional accent, so I acquired my Father's), but not when speaking more carefully: evidently sentence position is also a factor in the mix. Re the French influence, I was not suggesting an 800-year-old legacy from Norman French, but rather a 19th/20th-century affectation by upper-class Francophone English (in the modern sense) people and their genteel petty bourgeois imitators like myself. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 23:03, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

That's the point, the pattern of spelling with H without pronouncing it is in fact an 800-year-old legacy from Norman French. If any (phonologically adapted) post-Medieval loans from French (such as "hotel", perhaps, but hardly "historical" and "habitual") display the same pattern, it's only because they have joined the old pattern of "heir" and "hour". By the way, if imitation of modern French pronunciation had been intended in most of these cases, I think that people would have also pronounced "horizon" with stress on the last syllable and a nasal; in general, such recent loans are characterised by a much more consistent French-like pronunciation, e.g. "hors d'oeuvre".--91.148.159.4 (talk) 03:16, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

How interesting. I hadn't been aware of the Norman-French pronunciation retention before, but I now see that the article Phonological history of English fricatives and affricates alludes to it, though not with explicit mention of the 800-plus-year span. I had imagined that the Normans, with their own Norse/Germanic heritage, had tended to pronounce their nominally French h's, perhaps because of my familiarity with the emphatically anglicised pronunciation of English heraldic terminology which, of course, they introduced. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 21:46, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

At that time, not only the Normans, but also the French pronounced their H's in words of Germanic origin (e.g. in hardi from Germanic "hard"); that's because the French themselves were of partly Germanic (Frankish) origin, too and their phonology at the time was influenced by the Frankish language. However, as for words of Latin origin, the H's had stopped being pronounced already in Vulgar Latin and were just present in the spelling (French hôte from Latin "hospes"). So French back then had a split similar to the one that English has now. I think it's highly unlikely that the Normans could have eliminated the split by re-introducing the Latin H's from the spelling, because literacy was much lower at that time and the generally accepted gap between spoken and written language was much wider. In modern-day French, the Germanic H's have also disappeared, but the words still behave differently, because the Germanic H's (still traditionally called "H aspiré" in contrast to the "H muet", although neither type is aspirated and both are mute since at least the 17th or 18th century, I'm not sure exactly) don't allow liaison (although the two groups have become somewhat confused, of course): e.g. le hardi, but l'hôte. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:23, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

[dʒ] did exist in Old English, but not as a separate phoneme. It was an allophone of /j/ after /n/. The modern English words hinge and singe are directly inherited from Old English words that had [dʒ]; and the Old English word for "angel" probably had it too, but the Modern English word was probably re-borrowed from Latin, not inherited from Old English. —Angr (talk) 22:09, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Right, I see that this is the most common view in recent textbooks (though specifically hinge is said to have no precedent in OE in the dictionaries I checked). Personally, I'm used to a more "archaic" interpretation of the OE pronunciation, with palatal or palatalized plosives c/kʲ and ɟ/gʲ instead of the affricates tʃ and dʒ; certainly ɟ/gʲ or something like dʝ seems a more natural allophone of /j/ than [dʒ] does, although of course it did eventually end up as a dʒ. In any case, as you said, it was just an allophone, and in particular it could never have occurred word-initially as in Norman loans like "gentle", there being neither a preceding /n/ nor a possibility for gemination there.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 03:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

An initial H is even added by some where it doesn't belong, as in the word "aitch" itself, and (supposedly) in old-fashioned Cockney. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:28, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, another discussion forlornly looking for logic in the English language. As an Australian, I've always felt that Math just looks weird. In fact, I'm Maths teacher who just handed my students a worksheet from the web which has Math on top. One of my students asked me about it. I just said "Americans are different". Hope no-one's offended. HiLo48 (talk) 23:39, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Note that Canadians also say math. --Trovatore (talk) 23:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I did mean North American... thanks for an interesting discussion on a somewhat whimsical topic for me at least. Sandman30s (talk) 08:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Note that a famous maths series from the 20th century is Bourbaki's fr:Éléments de mathématique, where the "mathématique" is singular. Apparently the goal was to emphasize the unity of the field via the title. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"Maths" is harder to say than "math". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

That's why so many young Britons are studying maffs instead. LANTZY^TALK 18:09, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Except those who speak Multicultural London English, who prefer "matts". I wonder if Baseballbugs can get his tongue around "baths"? Alansplodge (talk) 18:10, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Or "Goths take months to make Corinthian plinths". -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 18:28, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Alan, that article says MLE does have th-fronting. —Angr (talk) 18:32, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

So it does. The reference provided quotes this as a case of "levelling" - ie existing local dialect being included in immigrant speech. My observation is that the most enthusiastic MLE speakers (of whatever ethnicity) who wish to affect the manners of a Jamaican gangster in the style of Ali G, use "d" and "t"; whereas those with a bit more Cockney in their speech retain "v" and "f" for the soft and hard "th" sound. Sorry I'm not really familiar with the linguistic jargon. Alansplodge (talk) 13:45, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Veni, vidi, vici - I came, I saw, I won?

I know that translations are by their very nature a very tricky business (tradutore, traitore) but could someone explain why Veni, vidi, vici is usually translated as: "I came, I saw, I conquered" instead of: "I came, I saw, I won"?

I mean I asked a couple of posts above (Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Latin translation) about the translation of "I won" into Classical Latin (I had a hunch but I wasn't certain) and the answers seem to indicate that "I won" is perfectly acceptable. I suspect that the translation is influenced by the context. Could someone please enlighten me about some of the details? Much obliged. Flamarande (talk) 17:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC) PS: I don't know any Latin so keep it simple, please.

This probably doesn't answer your question, but there's a common misunderstanding (at least, I assume it's a misunderstanding after having done two minutes' research on Google) that this expression refers to the invasion of Britain -- in which case "conquered" sounds much more apt than "won". 86.179.119.44 (talk) 18:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Just one example: An Abridgment of Leverett's Latin Lexicon (J.H. Wilkins and R.B. Carter, 1840) gives the following intransitive translations of vinco (apart from multiple translations for transitive usage):

"To conquer, get the victory, be victorious, in the field, in a combat or contest; [...] To conquer or win; 1. At play [...] 2. In a lawsuit [...] 3. In the senate, To carry the day, prevail [...] and generally, To carry the day, carry one's point; hence, vince viceris, have your own way, carry your point, as you will, when a man yields unwillingly or contemptuously [...] 4. To conquer, win, gain one's end or wish"

The omissions are mostly exemplifying literary quotes in Latin. ---Sluzzelin talk 18:58, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

One formal consideration choosing "conquer" might lie in the fact that it's an alliteration with "came" (though "saw" is not, so this won't reflect the triple alliteration ("v.., v.., v...") anyway. Moreover, "conquered" allows for the phrase to end in a trochee, like the Latin original. This is mere speculation though; I have no reference for either possible reason. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:04, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Another famous use is "in hoc signo vinces", where it is also typically translated "you will conquer" or "you will be victorious". Adam Bishop (talk) 19:59, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, I recommend speaking both versions out loud. Though Caesar reportedly wrote it down, rather than spoke it, the sentence clearly employs rhetorical devices, and is meant to ring in one's ears. Put some gravitas and determination in your voice, pretend you're Caesar (or John Gielgud), and note the difference between the yawny double diphtongued "I won" and the crisp pair of plosives in "conquered". ---Sluzzelin talk 20:41, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Julius Caesar ... having defeated the Ancient Britons ... set the memorable Latin sentence, "Veni, Vidi, Vici," which the Romans, who were all very well educated, construed correctly. The Britons, however, who of course still used the old pronunciation, understanding him to have called them "Weeny, Weedy and Weaky", lost heart and gave up the struggle, thinking that he had already divided them All into Three Parts.

In case anyone asks, the unsigned above is a quote from 1066 and All That. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 21:44, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Verb objects

Is it right that in "I fell thirty feet", the phrase "thirty feet" is adverbial and not the object of the verb "fall"? If, so what sort of grammatical test can we apply to prove this? I'm looking for something a bit more concrete than just "it doesn't feel like a proper object". 86.179.119.44 (talk) 18:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. A few ways to see this: 'Fall' is an intransitive verb [2], meaning that there is no direct object. A (slightly informal) test we can apply is listed in our article direct object: 'A direct object answers the question "What?"'. So in "the dog bit the man', 'man' is the answer to 'what did the dog bite?'. Only Transitive_verbs take direct objects. The corresponding question that 'thirty feet' answers is "to what extent did I fall?", which indicates that 'thirty feet' is an adverbial phrase, because it delimits the action of the verb. Also, 'fall' is sightly abnormal in that the subject_(grammar) is also the patient_(grammar). Does this help? SemanticMantis (talk) 19:30, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm familiar with the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs, though I would argue that "fall" is intransitive because it is observed not to take a direct object, not that "fall" cannot take a direct object because we already know it is intransitive, if you get my distinction. However, the "what" test seems good. I wonder if there are any exceptions to that? 86.181.203.84 (talk) 19:57, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

A: "I'm not sure whether to cook fish or meat tonight. What do you think?"
B: "I think fish."
86.177.104.235 (talk) 02:54, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes prepositions are omitted. I fell (on) Thursday (by) thirty feet.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:20, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Late to the party, and tangential: "fell" as a transitive verb means to topple, to bring down, to kill. (Paul Bunyan felled trees. David felled his foes.) In sewing, you can also fell a seam (create a seam by turning the raw edge of fabric under). --- OtherDave (talk) 20:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

March 1

Needing a Specific Word

There is a phenomena described as recognizing something quite frequently after discovering what it is; e.g. learning an actor's name and seemingly seeing their name everywhere you look on the Internet. I vaguely remember it as being two hyphenated words (did it start with a "b"?), but I don't remember exactly what it was called. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.132.46.33 (talk) 02:59, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

There is the recency effect. What you described is sometimes also called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. See also this older thread (which links to yet an older one). ---Sluzzelin talk 03:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Chinese language

My friend is a Chinese native speaker and he says that in Mandarin there are not swears in the way that we as English speakers perceive them (I think what he actually said was that there are no words/characters dedicated to swearing like our fuck, shit, etc.). Even though he admitted there are expressions used in negative ways, I find that there are no real swears hard to believe in any language can someone clarify? Thanks. -- 03:30, 1 March 2011 72.128.95.0

We have something at Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures... AnonMoos (talk) 04:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think he's right, there are plenty of swear words in Chinese. Granted, a lot of them are homophonous with non-swear words (in many cases this is because people adopted the non-swear word to use as a euphemism for the real one, or because input methods for their computers or cell phones don't have the swear word; for instance 操 cǎo and 靠 kào are both used in place of 肏 cào sometimes, and if used right--in the right context--can be just as offensive). But the swear words certainly exist. See Mandarin profanity for many examples. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:12, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Note that most English swear words aren't (or weren't originally) dedicated to swearing. "Shit" even today is commonly used as a non-expletive synonym of "feces". "Damn/damned/damnation" is an entirely proper theological concept. "Cunt" at one time was a straightforward word for a body part. The history of "fuck" is a little thin, but there is no evidence that its early usage wasn't limited simply because of limitations on discussing copulation for pleasure, rather than on any specific prohibition of the word. Heck, even the words "profane", "vulgar" and "swear" originally just meant "outside of church", "of the common people" and "to make an oath (pact)", respectively, rather than being expletive-specific. - Although I'm not familiar with Mandarin, I'm sure that there are plenty of words for excrement/sexual acts/sacrilege that, while also currently holding or originally holding a non-swearing connotation, would be interpreted by most current native speakers in most contexts it's currently used in as being an expletive. -- 174.31.194.183 (talk) 06:43, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Mandarin, as with pretty much any language, does have swearwords. In fact, I'd say cǎo is used pretty much the same way as English "fuck". However, a possible reason some Mandarin speakers don't associate Standard Mandarin with having a large set of swearwords is that these Mandarin speakers are actually native speakers of another Chinese dialect/language, in which they'd prefer to swear. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 09:15, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

According to Ashley Montagu The Anatomy of Swearing, 'Swearing, interestingly enough, is not a universal phenomenon: American Indians do not swear, nor do the Japanese, nor do Malayans and most Polynesians.' No mention of Mandarin there. That claim about the Japanese is one I've often heard before, but, as has already been said, it must depend to some extent on what you mean by swearing. --Antiquary (talk) 19:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Personally I would consider the Japanese word 'masukakiyarou', which means 'wanker', to be a swear word, as would every single Japanese speaker I know, especially because it is unambiguous in both its offensiveness and meaning - and there are plenty more where that came from. Seriously, 'blahdee blahdee blah people do not swear' is not true at all. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 00:26, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I've seen words that make Japanese colleagues blush. (Unfortunately, not being a Japanese speaker myself, I don't remember what they were.) rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:58, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Is the following pair of the sentences felicitous?

A man does not beat a donkey. He loves it.

As a non-native speaker, the above looks OK to me. Whereas, the following pair is unacceptable:

A man does not own a donkey. #It is gray.

117.211.88.150 (talk) 12:08, 1 March 2011 (UTC)Sukhada

An interesting pragmatic phenomenon. And also interestingly, it is possible to say "A man does not beat a donkey. It loves him" the reason that the second par is infelicitous is because of the meaning of the verb "own" - if he doesn't own a donkey then there is own donkey and so it can not be the subject of the next sentence, nor can it have a color. We can see that this is the reason because when we change the sentence to "The man does not own the donkey. It is gray" it becomes felicitous. It is the indefiniteness of "a donkey" coupled with the "does not own" that tells us that the donkey doesn't exist and therefore cannot be the subject of a clause.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:27, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

What about "A man does not own a donkey. It would be too expensive"? —Angr (talk) 12:37, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

That second "it" doesn't refer to the donkey but to the "owning of a donkey".·Maunus·ƛ· 19:11, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it's ambiguous. It could mean "It would be too expensive to own a donkey" but it could also mean "The donkey would be too expensive". —Angr (talk) 19:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The first example is grammatical but it's hard to think of a situation where anyone would want to say it. Certainly it wouldn't be said of any particular man or donkey. It sounds as if it's trying to be a proverb, or be metaphorical, or something like that. The second example is also grammatical but doesn't make much sense because "It" does not refer to anything (the interpretation that it refers to the donkey he doesn't own seems very strained). I don't know what you're trying to signify with the # character... 86.179.0.71 (talk) 12:45, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

The key question is what do you mean by "a man" and "a donkey". The indefinite article can be used both to introduce a particular example, or a general example. When reading the first as a whole, I immediately assume that what was meant was "A (specific, heretofore unmentioned) man does not beat his donkey. He loves it." that is, we are talking about a single man and a single donkey. On the other hand, if I just saw "A man does not beat a donkey. A donkey beats a man" instead, I would interpret the first sentence as talking about men and donkeys in general. The problem with the second set is that you're equivocating the two meanings of "a donkey" - in the first sentence it's referring to donkeys in general, whereas in the second the "it" is referring to a particular one. That's why the pair seems nonsensical. -- 174.31.194.183 (talk) 17:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Depends on what you mean by the first sentence ("A man does not own a donkey"). Do you mean, "there is a man X, such that X does not own any donkeys"? Or do you mean, "there is a donkey Y, such that the man (X) does not own Y"? Under the former reading, the second sentence is infelicitous because it has no referent ("it" does not refer to any donkey). Under the latter, it is fine for me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

---

Wikipedia article is Donkey sentence... AnonMoos (talk) 17:06, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Donkey pronoun has more material (The two articles should probably be merged with a redirect). Also see the article on discourse representation theory at SEP [3] SemanticMantis (talk) 21:36, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Latvian treatment of foreign names

I have noticed that in the Latvian language, foreign names seem to be "Latvianized" to some extent (e.g. Amar'e Stoudemire becomes "Amare Stademaijers"). What's going on here? 98.116.108.191 (talk) 21:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, as you said, it's Latvianized. It's spelled so that Latvian speakers will be able to pronounce it properly (which is actually less true of the original English spelling). The -s at the end is the Latvian nominative ending, like if his name was "Stoudemirus" in Latin, and it will change in other case endings. And if you think that spelling is weird, check out George Bush in Latvian! Adam Bishop (talk) 21:55, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) I have read that it is just "Latvian tradition" to spell foreign names as closely as possible with Latvian orthography, even if it is not required for pronunciation (most of the time it is). Foreigners were recently required by law to spell their names on all official documents "according to the spelling norms of the Latvian language". Xenon54 (talk) 21:57, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

It's different in English, where we'll accept the spelling as it is... and then totally butcher the pronunciation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:03, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

In Latvian, George Walker Bush is rendered as Džordžs Volkers Bušs, Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier becomes Antuāns Lorāns Lavuazjē and Claudia Schiffer becomes Klaudija Šīfere. Here is a category of pages at lv.wikipedia, which instruct how names in some languages should be spelt in Latvian and are used as auxiliary pages by the editors there.

Other languages that use a Latin-based alphabet and, traditionally, more or less, still adapt spellings of foreign names to their own pronunciation rules include: Lithuanian (where George W. Bush is Džordžas Volkeris Bušas); Albanian (Xhorxh Uokër Bush); Serbian when written with the Latin script (Džordž Voker Buš); a few languages that have been using the Latin script since relatively recently: Azerbaijani (Corc Uoker Buş), Turkmen (Jorj Uoker Buş), Uzbek (Jorj Uoker Bush); as well as some inventions like lojban (djordj. ualker. buc), a constructed language which has its own Wikipedia. --Theurgist (talk) 18:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Latvian spelling is highly phonetical - a letter usualy will correspond to a certain sound, the names are rendered in a way that Latvian reader will pronounce them as closely to original as posible with sounds of Latvian language. Note that diffrent languages use diffrent letters for same sounds. In case of Stoudemire (using IPA from the article) many letters match in both English and Latvian, but ɒ is ou in English and a in Latvian, while aɪ is, respectively i and ai. If it was left unchanged one might think that it is pronounced as /stoʊdəmɪrə. Endings are added so that the words can be declined (comonly -s for males and -a for females). There may however be some further adjustments to make the name sound better (such as j in Stoudemire`s case), also sounds that don`t exist in Latvian are commonly replaced with other sounds (e.g. umlauted u becomes i) and sometimes traditional equivalents of names are used (e.g. Carl can become Kārlis, rather than Karls) ~~Xil (talk) 00:05, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Insurance

We Brits have life assurance. Do Americans & Australians? Or do they have life insurance? Kittybrewster ☎ 21:51, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Insurance in the US, and in Canada; I don't know about America but there are some old Canadian insurance companies with "Assurance" in their name. Adam Bishop (talk) 21:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Some American insurance companies also use the word "Assurance" as part of their corportate name. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:37, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

In the US, "assurance" makes sure that something happens, or continues to happen, while "insurance" compensates you when it fails to happen. So, a bullet-proof vest might be called "life assurance", while double indemnity is "life insurance". StuRat (talk) 23:48, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

In the UK, one "insures" one's life by paying a premium to a company which pays out on one's death, but one sometimes pays "life assurance" premiums to gain a pension that is (often) lost on death. The terms do get confused though, because one is insuring against death (but companies don't like using the expression "death insurance"), and one wishes to be assured both that one will have sufficient income in retirement and that one's dependants will have sufficient means if one dies. Also, some companies might have mixed policies. The terms have been used interchangeably in the UK for centuries. Dbfirs 23:59, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I recall that traditionally in UK law assurance is generally only used for life assurance, while insurance is used for all other types of insurance, though as Dbfirs has pointed out the terms are used interchangeably these days. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 05:02, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that seems to be the modern "tradition", though marine insurance was also called "assurance" in the past. Dbfirs 07:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

You need to specify your location, because it's "life insurance" in the US. StuRat (talk) 17:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I was referring to UK law. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 19:33, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

The way it was explained to me is that insurance relates to possible events while assurance relates to inevitable events. Your car might be stolen, so you insure it. You will die someday, so you get an assurance policy that pays out when it happens. Insurance is gambling - Assurance is investment. I'm South African. Roger (talk) 08:42, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Having spent more than 25 years working as a drudge in the London insurance market and gaining a rather modest vocational qualification, I can confirm that in the UK, the word "assurance" is specifically a type of life insurance as Dbfirs describes above. Otherwise the terms are interchangeable, but "assurance" is rather archaic. However in Lloyd's of London for formal purposes, it's always "assurance" and the party buying the cover is always "the assured" or "the reassured" in the case of reinsurance. Dbfirs is also right about marine insurance as most of it is transacted through Lloyd's at some stage. Additionally, the word "insurance" translates as "assurance" in French, "assuransi" in Italian and so on. To answer Roger's point above, most basic insurance textbooks start with a chapter headed "Why Insurance Is Not Gambling" or words to that effect. Insurance COULD be gambling a couple of hundred years ago, when it was possible to take out a life policy on a well known military figure in the hope that he would be killed in action, or on a vagrant and then arrange for his early demise. All that came to an end with the Common Law principle of Insurable interest. Read, learn and inwardly digest. Alansplodge (talk) 17:37, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the usage in England; had I (an American from North Carolina) seen the phrase "life assurance," I would have chalked it up to the same type of error as "life ensurance" (I'm assuming that's also an error in the UK. It's one of the more common errors that I see in the US). To me, assurance is the promise that something will happen, so life assurance would be paying a corporation to ensure that I live. I love these dialectical differences; it is quite fascinating. I have family in England, and I still run into things I haven't heard before. Falconus^{p t c} 06:39, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Alansplodge what you describe is "gambling" with assurance not insurance. Insurance is "gambling" in the sense that the insurer is taking a risk on their client's car being stolen - or not. Don't take it too literally, Lloyds is obviously not a casino. :) Roger (talk) 07:17, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Lloyds certainly was run like a casino (though with different gambling rules) in the days of "names" who were often ruined if a major catastrophe meant that their unlimited liability had to be called on. Dbfirs 18:17, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Foreign language help

Where do these names come from:

• Rood
• Bronius
• Giallo
• Ryoku
• Gorm
• Zinzolin

--75.15.161.185 (talk) 22:27, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Those I recognize are colors, and come from different languages. rood is Dutch for red, giallo is Italian for yellow, gorm is Irish and Scottish Gaelic for blue, zinzolin is a French word for a type of reddish purple. I don't know about ryoku or bronius, though the latter sounds like it could mean brown. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:46, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Ryoku (りょく, 緑) is Japanese, meaning "green" (in compound words). 86.179.0.132 (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

... and according to this, Bronius does indeed mean "brown" and is of German origin. 86.179.0.132 (talk) 23:12, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"Bronius" is latinised German. Back when Latin was the only "fit and proper" language for writing important stuff vernacular names were commonly latinized. Roger (talk) 07:43, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

March 2

Expressing emotions in tonal languages

I am not a linguist, but how is emotion such as anger or sadness expressed in tonal languages such as (I think) Mandarin? In english the tone of voice would help express emotion, but is some different system used in tonal languages? Thanks 92.15.29.32 (talk) 01:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Tonal languages are not based on "absolute pitch", and still allow ample expression of emotion (though there may be certain minor complexities involved with singing, and such languages may tend not to have the strong "free" emphatic/contrastive pitch accent of English -- but French and many other non-tonal languages don't have the strong "free" emphatic/contrastive pitch accent of English either)... AnonMoos (talk) 03:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the OP has a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of a tonal language, as least as Mandarin is concerned. Tone here does not refer to tone as in tone of voice. There is no less variation in Mandarin in tone of voice (contrasting pitch and volume and prosody) than in English. This is a large part because Chinese has contour tones, not register tones (sadly, those links lead to the same article). The difficulty the OP describes may be present in languages with register tones. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 03:50, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there's too much of a misunderstanding on the part of the OP and his conjecture is natural; the layman's notion of "tone of voice" does include pitch (although it's not restricted to it). The fact is that the four lexical "tones" of Mandarin (high level, rise, fall-rise, fall) do resemble different intonational pitch accents in English or other intonation languages, and since those intonational pitch accents do indeed help express different things in intonation languages, we can't avoid the conclusion that Mandarin is forced to do without these particular means of expression. The difference between contour and register tone is not very relevant, I think; both pitch levels and pitch movements can be used expressively in intonation languages, and as soon as they are lexical, that tool becomes unavailable (also, even "contour tone languages" often have several level tones or distinctions based on "absolute" height, although Mandarin specifically is not a good example of that). However, as others have pointed out, there are so many other ways to express emotion and other pragmatic subtleties that in practice speakers of tonal languages have no problem doing it; even in intonation languages a pitch accent per se is not enough to express anything. It's not just that there are other ways than pitch; even with lexical pitch distinctions, you can still find plenty of workarounds and manage to preserve the distinctions while also manipulating your pitch expressively. For example, you can make the correct pitch movements (rise, fall) or use the correct pitch levels (high, low, middle) while increasing the size of the pitch excursion and exaggerating both the high and the low parts, or transposing them all upwards or downwards.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 12:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

There are still other ways to express emotion, including other forms of prosody (loudness, speech rate), word choice ("fuck you!"), and body language. I've had Mandarin speakers angry at me before and they have no trouble getting it across! rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:31, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

"The" in front of a person's name

Translating Jeffery Deaver's Edge, I found the sentence as following. "I am, of course, the Henry Loving of his life."

'Henry Loving' is the enemy of the speaker.

If not for 'the', I would have tried to find what 'am' represents. It seems 'the' has a special meaning here.

Please help. --Analphil (talk) 06:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

If "Henry Loving" is the speaker's enemy, then it would seem he's using "Henry Loving" as a synonym for "enemy", which naturally requires "the" in front of it. Using someone's name this way is not unusual in English. Maurice Richard could have been called "the Babe Ruth of hockey", for example, as they were both highly prolific scorers in their respective sports. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:59, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

It's very common to use "the" with a personal name when the personal name is being used metaphorically like that. Examples: "The Elizabeth Taylor of the Jihad" (from www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2311797/posts, not directly linkable because freerepublic.com is blacklisted), "Being called the Brad Pitt of the blogosphere didn't hurt either", "Natalie is the Audrey Hepburn of our generation", and so on. —Angr (talk) 07:08, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

'Henry Loving'='speaker's enemy'. That seems right. Thank you.--Analphil (talk) 07:13, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Chinese translation

The following terms all mean have sex in Chinese, but what is the difference, if any, between them? What would be the best way to translate each term into English? 做愛做的事,嘿咻,炒飯,上,共赴巫山 AngelicVoices (talk) 09:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure how 做愛做的事 means having sex. Certainly 做愛 is a literal translation of the English "make love", but 做愛做的事 seems to me to mean "do what one loves", where "do" has no connotation of sex and "what" is a task rather than a person or inanimate object. Is it a clever way to disguise 做愛 in a longer phrase so as to beat the censors?

嘿咻 is an onomatopoeia representing physical effort, poronounced "hei-xiu" - a bit like "hey-yo" or "heave-ho" or "heigh-ho". wikt:嘿咻 seems to explain its usage as a euphemism quite well, although 嘿咻 appears to be a Taiwanese regionalism

炒飯 is another Taiwanese regionalism, literally "frying rice". Google 嘿咻vs炒飯 and there are quite a few blog posts discussing the difference between these two expressions.

上 literally means "mount" in this context, and has largely the same sexual connotations of the latter in English.

共赴巫山 is a much more literary euphemism. Literally "go together to Mount Wushan". There doesn't seem to be a Wikipedia article on Mount Wushan, but it translates literally as "Shaman/Witch/Warlock Mountain", and is the subject of much folklore. The particular literary reference here is to the poetry of the Chu kingdom, the Chu Ci (see, specifically, 高唐赋 and 神女赋), which recounts a story told by Song Yu to the King Qingxiang of Chu - that the previous King Huai of Chu once dreamed of a beautiful woman, who said she was the daughter of Mount Wushan. She told the king that she was willing to give the king her bed and pillow. The king made love to her, and when they parted, she said that he could find her on the south side of Wushan, and that she was a cloud in the morning and rain in the evening. The Goddess Peak of Mount Wushan, which is visible from Wu Gorge, one of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze, is identified with her. A number of customary phrases which serve as euphemisms for sex in Chinese derive from this story, including 共赴巫山 as mentioned, but also 朝云暮雨 ("cloud by day and rain by night"), 巫山云雨 ("the clouds and rain of Wushan"), and simply 云雨 ("clouds and rain"). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 11:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Escape to Witch Mountain, eh? Puts a whole new light on what Tia and Tony were up to... —Angr (talk) 22:50, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Yikes, they'd need to be careful with translations if this is ever marketed into China. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:29, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Elvedin (given name)

Recently, I stumbled over the given name Elvedin and wonder abut the meaning of this name. It occurs from Slowenia to Serbia as a name for boys. On unreliable baby name sites I found the following explanations: 1 El-ve-Din (turkish/arabic) Hand-and-Faith 2 Ilvudin (arabic) Gift. I don't think that either of these two explanations holds, because I could not locate the name for turkish or arabic people and the pattern used in (1) is not productive for turkish names. Has someone an explanation? Is there a natural slavonic derivation of the name? Elbowin (talk) 10:24, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

It is a Bosniak (Muslim) name; there is some information at Bosniaks#Surnames and names. While I'm from the area and know a lot of names, I'm not too familiar with onomastics. However I would say that there are certain names among Bosniaks which are absent from modern Turkish and Arabic namestock; they were possibly retained from the time of Ottoman rule, or maybe have always been local inventions (but I'm speculating). One more familiar to me is Elmedin: this site says (and Google search confirms) that it is mainly Bosnian and Albanian; they also have an entry for Elvedin, giving the origin from Arabic "Hand des Glaubens" (Hand of Faith?).
What I can say with certainty that it does not contain any Slavic influence. As our article explains, some Bosniak common names do have Slavic origin or influence (Zlatan, Avdo, Mujo), but not this one. No such user (talk) 10:42, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I live in Slovenia and I must say I've never heard that particular name before, but the Slovene statistics office confirms it exists in Slovenia - there's not too many of them, but they certainly exist. It appears it was particularly popular from the 70s to the end of the 80s, not so much lately. Oh yeah, and I can confirm everything No such user says, it would be Bosniak, and it doesn't sound like it has Slavic influences, but it could be a name with a particular history that binds it to this region of the Balkans. TomorrowTime (talk) 12:47, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure it isn't a borrowing from English? Elveden (pron. el-VEE-den) is a village in Suffolk known best for being the country seat of the Earls of Iveagh, who are the Guinness family (known for beer, world records, etc.). --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 23:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure of anything. Thanks to No Such User and TomorrowTime for excluding a slavonic explanation. So it is borrowed from somewhere, but we don't know from where. I considered the similarity to Elmedina, but how can an 'm' mutate to a 'v'? Is Elveden used as an english first name? Sometimes english first names reappear in quite unusual spellings in a slavonic context, e.g., Ivelina (from Evelyn). Another possibility: Is there a literary figure (or a folk tale figure) named Elvedin? Elbowin (talk) 12:49, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Stuttering and Slurring

The term stuttering and slurring have different meanings, however, it is noticed that "stuttering or slurring of speech" is used commonly, which also means that stuttering and slurring have same meaning. So when it comes to description of speech, do stuttering and slurring i.e. two different words, do they have the same meaning, do they have same sound and effect. Is stuttering and slurring one and the same thing?

aniketnik (talk) 13:06, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

No. People who are drunk may slur. Kings may stutter. Kittybrewster ☎ 13:17, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

As above. Also, I'm curious why you think stuttering and slurring must have the same meaning just because they're often used in conjunction like that. If anything, their use together should indicate that they're distinct yet related in some way (as they are, as both involve speech difficulties). Matt Deres (talk) 13:51, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Ditto. "Stuttering or slurring of speech", in context, means "either stuttering or slurring", not that the two words have identical meanings. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Linguistics

Hey all. I am a first year linguistics student and I'm working on some homework consisting of a reading and then comprehension questions (I know, it's juvenile but it's to make sure we actually do the reading). One of the questions is: What is the Lenneberg hypothesis of language acquisition and how is it frequently cited incorrectly? I got the first part (it is the theory that there is a critical period from age ~3 to puberty when language learning occurs, after which language learning becomes very quickly more difficult), but there is nothing in the reading about the second. These questions are separate from the reading, prepared by the professor. Can anyone guide me to how the hypothesis is cited incorrectly? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 22:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether our article Critical period hypothesis has the answer to your question, but it may be worth reading anyway. —Angr (talk) 22:48, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Have you checked your professor's lecture notes? In my experience, most professors will not give questions with answers that you can't figure out from the class materials, without explicitly saying so. rʨanaɢ (talk) 09:02, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

And many professors will give questions that you have to have been present in class and taking notes to answer correctly, rather than just doing the readings after either skipping class or spending the entire class period on Facebook. —Angr (talk) 15:38, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Lenneberg (1967) a highly cited work, and your professor probably does not intend that you sift through all works that cite it looking for errors. I agree with Rjanag, there are probably some hints/ leads in the class materials. You may already be aware of "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" [4]. A lesson in both cases is that just because a paper is cited doesn't mean that it is cited appropriately, and this mis-citation can propagate quickly through the literature, leading to 'well-known facts' that are completely unfounded. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Critical period hypothesis#Second language acquisition suggests a possible answer. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

By the way, it's not juvenile to ask questions about the reading. If you just read and then move on with life, you tend not to remember too much since the activity was too passive. One of the best ways to remember something you've read is to make it a bit more active of a process, pondering the implications of the ideas and all that. You probably should be doing something similar even if the professor doesn't give any questions to answer. Just my $/50, but still, it's valid.

March 3

Tai chi chuan pronunciation

How do you pronounce Tai chi chuan? — Hucz ^{(talk · contribs)} 07:46, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

You can listen to a Chinese woman's pronunciation at here. Click the flag on the map or the ▷ on the left under the map. Oda Mari (talk) 08:30, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The pronunciation Oda Mari linked to is accurate and clear. If you need a written transcription: the official Hanyu pinyin transcription is available at the article you linked, the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA transcription would be [tʰai˥˩ t͡ɕi˧˥ t͡ɕʰɥɛn˧˥], and an [American] English approximation would be "tie jee chwen". rʨanaɢ (talk) 08:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

If you can read IPA, then it's [tʰaɪ˥˩ tɕi˧˥ tɕʰɥɛn˧˥], and tài jí quán in Hanyu Pinyin. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 09:04, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank-you all for your help. It's greatly appreciated! — Hucz ^{(talk · contribs)} 09:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Aram Khachaturian - Correct Armenian / Russian pronunciation

Resolved

What is the correct pronunciation of Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian's name? That is, in Armenian and/or Russian, whichever represents the origin of his name. --DI (talk) 10:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It's an Armenian name. According to wikt:Խաչատրյան, the pronunciation in Eastern Armenian is [χɑtʃʰɑtˈɾjɑn]. —Angr (talk) 10:39, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This made my day. Thanks!--DI (talk) 10:54, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

However, I've never heard Aram K's name pronounced that way. That IPA is 3 syllables. In English speaking couuntries it's given 4 syllables, and always spoken with the stress on the u vowel (3rd syllable) that's totally missing in the above IPA. The Russians spell it Ара́м Ильи́ч Хачатуря́н, also 4 syllables, and they place the stress on the final syllable. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 11:05, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

From the article, the Cyrillic is "Хачатуря́н" (no clue what the diacritic above я means). Possibly χatʃətuˈrʲan?--Shirt58 (talk) 11:15, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The diacritic means the stress is on the я. And the Armenian really doesn't have any "u" in it: the letter-by-letter transliteration of Խաչատրյան is Xačatrjan. I don't know why Russian sticks a "u" in it, but it's pretty ironic that the vowel that's stressed in the English pronunciation (and as an English speaker I say [ˌkætʃəˈtʊriən] in five syllables) isn't even present in the Armenian original. (And don't say "euphony" as a reason for the "u": Russian speakers should have no difficulty at all pronouncing Хачатря́н [xɐt͡ɕɐˈtrʲan].) —Angr (talk) 11:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

This is indeed funny. Sergey Khachatryan, for example, has the same surname in Armenian, but it got transliterated more accurately in English and Russian ("Хачатрян"). ---Sluzzelin talk 11:53, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I wonder whether there was a change in rules of transliteration at some point of time (Revolution?). The oldest of the people listed under Khachatryan is Rafik Khachatryan (Хачатрян, Рафик Гарегинович) who was born in 1937. ---Sluzzelin talk 11:58, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I just learned that the name is derived from the given name Khachatur, see for example: Khachatur-Bek of Mush. In Russian it is Хачатур, In Armenian it is Խաչատուր, pronounced [χɑtʃʰɑˈtuɾ] ("from խաչ (xačʿ, “cross”) + տուր (tur, “something given”) տամ < (tam, “I give”). The name thus means "given by cross".") ---Sluzzelin talk 19:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

And now I just learned that it was already mentioned in Angr's first wiktionary link. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of West Anglia

Someone here should know this. Does the College of West Anglia really rhyme with 'flier'? It's been tagged for quite a while. — kwami (talk) 15:59, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I come from Cambridge and I have never heard of this. I think it's a mistake. Also, I would love to know what's "west" about the place. Marnanel (talk) 16:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It's in King's Lynn, which is in western Norfolk. Which brings us to another pronunciation question: the article says King's Lynn is pronounced /ˈkɪŋzlɪn/, with a single stress on the first syllable, as if spelled "Kingslin". Is that right? Or is it actually pronounced /ˌkɪŋz ˈlɪn/, like two words, as it's spelled? —Angr (talk) 16:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The latter (according to anyone I've ever heard say it), with slightly more stress on "Lynn", if anything. And I agree with Marmanel about the original question. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Depends upon where in the UK the person you ask to pronounce it comes from. Most will pronounce the end 'a' in the same way as you wound say the name Angela, others will turn it into an '-ier' sound. - X201 (talk) 16:07, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not just the pronunciation of the final "a", it's the stress of the whole word. What the article claims is that in the college's name, Anglia is pronounced "ang-GLY-uh" (GLY to rhyme with "fly"; the whole word to rhyme with "Mariah" (Carey) or "pariah"), rather than "ANG-glee-uh" as would normally be expected. And Kwami is asking if that's right. —Angr (talk) 16:16, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Sounds wrong to me -- Q Chris (talk) 16:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Good question. I would have assumed "ANG-glee-uh". The trailing "r" would be a common spoken oddity of some English-speaking regions, which is especially noticeable if the next word starts with a vowel. A couple of quick examples that come to mind: a stereotypical New Yorker saying, "good idear"; JFK referring to Cuba as "Cubar"; and The Galloping Gourmet referring to his wife Trina as "Trinar and I..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:21, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about the 'flier' example. I was assuming a non-rhotic dialect. I meant what Angr said.

Actually, the original edit was Template:Pron-en, hwest-æŋɡ-laɪər. — kwami (talk) 16:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Here's what it looked like the moment the pronunciation was first added: "Template:Pron-en, hwest-æŋɡ-laɪər", which implies "ahng" in IPA but "ang" (to rhyme with "hang") in respelling. I think the editor who added the pronunciation isn't entirely sure how to represent pronunciation in either system (and is pretty clearly a non-rhotic speaker). —Angr (talk) 16:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

See and hear http://www.forvo.com/search/Anglia/. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

See and hear http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=anglia&submit=Submit. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:40, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the erroneous pronunciation from the article, as I don't think it's necessary in any case. For example there's no pronunciation guide in University of East Anglia. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:41, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Question: does anyone pronounce "west" as "hwest", with a hard h, as the "respell" seems to imply? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 19:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I doubt it. At least one person seems to think it should be spoken that way, but why would they think that? Maybe a confusion with wh- words like white. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Communicating while relating Schedule information

Define how to communicate the Friday of the week we are engaged in ...'this Friday'? verses the week we will enter into following the upcoming weekend, 'next Friday'?

This is a frustrating topic in our household and a constant communication issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.137.180.183 (talk) 18:39, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

For some relevant information about when the week begins, see Seven-day week#Week numbering.

—Wavelength (talk) 18:47, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

"This Friday" and "Next Friday" seem pretty self explanatory, at least in my household. If you wanted to be more specific, you could instead say "Friday of this week" and "Friday of next week", or simply use the dates. --Zerozal (talk) 19:36, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

If today is Monday and you refer to "next Friday", do you mean in 4 days time or in 11 days time? It could easily mean either, so it is inherently ambiguous. "This Friday", however, would always mean the first one after today, whether it's as close as tomorrow or as far away as 6 days time. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 20:12, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

If today is Saturday, this Friday could mean "yesterday" if there is not sufficient disambiguation from verb tenses. This Friday will be remembered as the day of the official opening of Smith Arena.

—Wavelength (talk) 20:42, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Anecdotally, we've always used "this Friday" to be short for "this coming Friday", never for "yesterday" when it's Saturday. "Next Friday" would mean Friday next week, until you actually get past Friday, and then it becomes "this [coming] Friday" again. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:02, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

What if today is Sunday and you say "this weekend" meaning the one currently happening, but then refer to Friday night (two days ago) as part of said weekend? Is it still "last Friday" even though it's part of "this weekend"? Cherry Red Toenails (talk) 12:54, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

How about if today is Friday ? Does "this Friday" then mean today ? I always like to specify the number of days from today, so would say "this Friday, 3 days from today, is when we should bury the body in the crawlspace". :-) StuRat (talk) 06:24, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

If today is Friday, one would never use "this Friday" to refer to it. I always just give the date ("On Monday (7 March) ..."). — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I can think of a case where it might be: "Should we go this Friday or next Friday ?". Yes, you could say "today" instead of "this Friday", but people might say it my way, too. StuRat (talk) 20:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

In the UK, for "not this Friday coming but the next one" we would say "Friday week" and the following Friday would be "Friday fortnight". But people still get in a muddle over "next Friday" which has built-in uncertaintity. Alansplodge (talk) 09:33, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I was always a little uncertain as to what "Friday week" meant when I lived in the UK. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:28, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

French words ending in -ent

Is the -ent ending always silent or just in verbs? Is the -ent pronounced in words like arpent and récent? --75.15.161.185 (talk) 23:06, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Just in verbs in the 3rd-person plural. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 23:24, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not necessarily silent, in many dialects of French the -ent (as in ils parlent) has a light /ə/ sound. Basawala also puts forth a very good point, that it is not silent in (for example) il appartient. 72.128.95.0 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:31, 3 March 2011 (UTC).

The t can also be pronounced because of liaison, which is obligatory in some cases (parlent-ils français? = [paʁlətʁil fʁɑ̃sɛ]) and optional in others (ils étaient à Paris = [ilz‿etɛ(t‿)a paʁi]). In fact, the only letter that is always silent (in regular verbs in the 3rd-person plural) is the n. Lesgles (talk) 23:49, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Yep, however we can also analyze that as an schwa-insertion after a consonant cluster, and t-insertion as a buffer used in inversions. Note that the inversion of il parle, which is parle-t-il, is pronounced the exact same way as parlent-ils; in these cases -ent is an orthographic convention that is not reflected in the actual grammar of the language. In other words, you would (almost) never pronounce the <t> in "Ils parlent avec moi", just as you wouldn't place a buffer t in "Il parle avec moi", (not *"Il parle-t-avec moi"). (Addendum : You're right that it's optional, but IMO not very natural and very rare in colloquial speech) ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 00:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

More on this interesting issue here. ʙʌsʌwʌʟʌ ^{spik ʌp!} 00:52, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

And yes, the "ent" in nouns and adverbs is pronounced. For example, "absolument" (adverb) and "le mouvement" (noun). I can't think of any adjectives that end in "ent" at the moment, but then again it's late. Falconus^{p t c} 06:11, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Addendum: if you ever are confused about a word's pronunciation, you can generally find the standard pronunciation in a good dictionary (or online). For example, this tells you that "arpent" is pronounced "/aʀpɑ̃/ ". You may or may not understand the IPA, but it's a clue that at least something is pronounced after the 'p' (in this case, it happens to be a nasal vowel, similar (but not identical) to the English "own" if you hold back the 'n'). Falconus^{p t c} 06:18, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

March 4

Two chameleons or four?

Here are two brief quotations:

- "the two chameleons on both sides of the great facade"

- "two chameleons can be found at either side of the façade"

The first is from a source document, the second is in our article Sagrada Família, about a remarkable church in Barcelona, Spain. The chameleons in question are stone carvings so they are immobile.

I can't tell from these quotations if there are two chameleons, one on each side of the facade OR two on each side for a total of four chameleons. The question is, are the quotations clear or ambiguous? And if they are clear, what do they say?

This question relates to a good-natured discussion on Talk:Sagrada Família. Thank you, Wanderer57 (talk) 03:55, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I do not think the second statement is ambiguous. To me, it states that there are altogether four chameleons, two on each side of the façade. The first statement is slightly ambiguous, but generally I would take it to mean the same thing as the second statement. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 07:05, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Problem is, we know many people would say something like the first sentence to disclose that there were two in total, one on each side. They often interchange "each" and "both", with infelicitous results. They might also say the second sentence to communicate exactly the same thing, instead of "two chameleons can be found, one at either side of the façade". So, I'd want to know who was making the statement before I decided how best to interpret it. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 07:53, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I too can see the second statement as ambiguous. It's like the common confusion about bimonthly (twice a month? every two months?). You can't do anything about the source, but as Jack suggests it wouldn't take much to change the article to make the reality clearer (if you can determine from visits or photos just how many chameleons are not scampering about the place) --- OtherDave (talk) 09:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC).

According to the article the creatures in question appear at the Nativity Facade. I don't know if any of the photographs in "commons:Category:Nativity Facade of Sagrada Familia" are helpful. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 12:38, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't answer the question of how many there are, but one of the buggers can be seen in File:Barcelona 250.JPG, just to the right of the topmost of the three trefoil windows (or windowlike decorations—it's hard to tell) along the lower left edge of the image. Deor (talk) 13:39, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a message can be left at "Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spain" asking for a volunteer in Barcelona to have a look ... — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:32, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see sentence two as ambiguous; the implied (apparently wrong) meaning is that there are four chamaleons altogether.

I agre with JackLee analysis about the first phrase. So, we are left with the impression that there are four creatures.
Let's check context:

For instance, the three porticos are separated by two large columns, and at the base of each lies a turtle or a tortoise (one to represent the land and the other the sea; each are symbols of time as something set in stone and unchangeable). In contrast to the figures of turtles and their symbolism, two chameleons can be found at either side of the façade, and are symbolic of change.

Here, context (at least to me) suggests that there two of them, in relation with the number of turtles. And it is indeed the case, as the pictorial book Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia shows on page 57 (one on the Portico of Faith, and the other on the Portico of Hope). This web reference also talks of two turtles and two chamaleons. Pallida  Mors 20:53, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Biweekly, bimonthly, biannual

I was surprised to see in Chambers dictionary, to which I bow in all matters regarding the English language, that there is so much flexibility regarding the above words. I always took biweekly to mean "every two weeks" (i.e. fortnightly), bimonthly to mean "every two months" and biannual to mean "every two years". But Chambers tells me that while these meanings are certainly possible, it is also possible to use biweekly to mean "twice a week", bimonthly to mean "twice a month" and biannual to mean "twice a year". Interestingly, there is another word biennial which can only mean "every two years" and thus should be used instead of biannual when "every two years" is intended, to remove ambiguity. But there is no equivalent word for weeks and months. It seems to me as though biweekly, bimonthly and biannual should be avoided and "twice a week", "fortnightly" or some other construction used instead. Any other thoughts or comments? --Viennese Waltz 14:18, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I only ever use those terms when talking about seeds and their growing times. Other wise I would say "twice per month", "twice per year", and "every two years", to name a few. 216.120.192.143 (talk) 14:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Oddly enough, when it came time to re-negotiate our mortgage, the wife and I had to choose between paying bi-weekly instalments and bi-monthly instalments. "Bi-weekly" meaning we'd have to make 26 payments a year (i.e. every two weeks) versus "bi-monthly" meaning we'd make 24 payments a year (i.e. twice a month). Matt Deres (talk) 14:41, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there is an ambiguity in common usage with "biweekly" and "bimonthly" and you have to make sure you get the right meaning. The same thing is true for phrases like "next Monday" which (said on March 4) could mean March 7 or March 14 depending on the speaker. The payroll that Matt Deres had "bimonthly" is also called "semimonthly", which is unambiguous. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:54, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'd always use "semi-" for half the period, which is clear. If "bi-" is ambiguous, I'd just say "every 2 years/months/weeks". StuRat (talk) 20:36, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it's clear and unambiguous to you guys, but I would have no idea what it meant. To my mind, "semi-" just means "partly" (i.e. less than half) and it's usually used to denote something fractional (semi-conductor, semi-sweet, etc.) so saying that something is semi-monthly would make me think it's something that doesn't happen exactly monthly, but perhaps once every few months. But that's just me trying to parse it right now; I don't think I've heard that term before. When I need to be clear, I just say "twice monthly". Matt Deres (talk) 23:24, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, Matt. I was thinking "semi-weekly" obviously meant reducing the period and thus increasing the frequency, whereas you see it as reducing the frequency, and thus increasing the period, which is an equally valid interpretation. On the other hand, if something occurred every 10 days, it would never occur to me to call it "semi-weekly". Not sure how I would label it, actually; I'd probably abandon labels and spell it out exactly. If it occurred every 5 days, I might be tempted to call it "semi-weekly". But such a label would be of no use if the exact period was required. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 00:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I think this is something that will never become exactly unambiguous. The problem is that we are given two things, a number and a fixed-length period. We are missing a third thing - whether we are supposed to multiply or divide the period with the number. Both are equally valid interpretations. I suppose we have to do with words like "forthnightly" and "quarterly". JIP | Talk 21:39, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Word order

Does this sentence below sound right (regarding word order) to you? "The Spanish Economy website provides access to the latest key economic information on Spain in English in a clear and comprehensive manner." If the order is wrong, what rule does apply here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.169.191.238 (talk) 16:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

It's fine. The text "on Spain in English" sounds slightly funny to me, so if I were writing this, I would probably either change it to "on Spain, in English," (two commas added) or possibly move "in English" to the end of the sentence. But it's readable as-is. Comet Tuttle (talk) 18:23, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll second Comet Tuttle and the comma suggestion. I might tweak "on Spain" to "about Spain," but that would be just to eliminate having "on" and "in" so close to each other. "...economic information about Spain, in English, in a clear and comprehensive manner." --- OtherDave (talk) 18:58, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

What about "The Spanish Economy website provides access to the latest key economic information in English about Spain in a clear and comprehensive manner."? 212.169.184.47 (talk) 19:55, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

That's fine, too, but now I'd add commas before and after "about Spain". The reason is that this is a change in direction in the sentence, from talking about the subject of the article to the language in which it is presented. It doesn't matter what order those two concepts are listed, as commas are needed to signal a change in direction, either way. StuRat (talk) 20:19, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Also, that sentence seems a bit long, to me. Is the phrase "access to" needed ? If you mean that it provides links to the info, rather than providing it directly, then maybe it is important, although you might want to say that explicitly. Do you need the word "key" ? Could "information" be shortened to "info" or "data" ? And, finally, "comprehensive" seems like a bit of a stretch, as that would mean that this site has every bit of economic data on Spain that exists. A similar comment applies to "the latest"; can you guarantee that all new economic data on Spain is added on the day it is published ? So, here's my version: "The Spanish Economy website provides current economic data on Spain, in English, presented in a clear manner." The "presented in a clear manner" part, is, of course, opinion, and not fact, so only include that where opinions are desired. StuRat (talk) 20:29, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible that when saying "comprehensive"(complete/exhaustive), what you really had in mind was "comprehensible"(understandable)? As the latter would convey more or less the same meaning as "presented in a clear manner", this allows for further shortening down the sentence. If we moved that term to the first part of the sentence, we might get something like this: "The Spanish Economy website provides current and comprehensible economic data on Spain, in English."--DI (talk) 22:56, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and if you are bothered with that last comma (makes the sentence a bit stilted, perhaps?), it might help moving the terms "on Spain" and "in English" farther apart: "The Spanish Economy website provides current and comprehensible Spanish economic data in English."--DI (talk) 22:56, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd still add a comma, after "data", in this case. StuRat (talk) 01:03, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

What does "irakere" mean, exactly?

According to our article on Irakere, the word means "vegetation" in Yoruba. According to other sources (on the band), it means "forest" or "jungle". I couldn't find the word in any online Yoruba-English dictionary. If anyone speaks the language or has access to a Yoruba dictionary, I'd like to know which meanings are possible for this word, and how it is actually spelled in Yoruba. Thanks in advance. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:04, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Irukere, iruexim, eruquerê and other variants is the Yoruba name for a horse-hair or cow tail whip which is the symbol of Oxossi, spirit of the forest and often a symbol of kingship/royalty. I expect this is where the name came from, whether there are folk tales that link it more directly I am not sure, perhaps the whip was originally vegetation or represented the plants. meltBanana 23:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I know this has no direct bearing on the OPs question, but for the sake of curiosity, in Danish the word "irakere" would literally translate to English as "Iraqis". --Saddhiyama (talk) 23:37, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that! (I had had no idea my title would be misleading to some of you :-) Wiktionarywise, I only found it on Nynorsk Wiktionary, as a Bokmål entry. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:25, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, meltBanana. The spiritual "irukere Ifá" connection certainly sounds plausible (and is one that didn't occur to me at all). It's just strange that I found not a single hit for either "Irakere" + "irukere" nor + "iruexim", nor + "eruquerê" (and I tried specifically searching Spanish language sites too). Maybe I'll have to e-mail Chucho Valdés. ---Sluzzelin talk 14:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

March 5

Fandex?

Resolved

Does anyone know what 'fandex' means? It appears to be used extensively in fantasy wargaming, and seems to refer to army lists, but I am not sure. My confusion comes from a possible etymology I have thought of, being that it comes from the combination of 'fan' + 'decks', as in 'card-decks', leading me to believe that it refers only to 'armies' used in card-based wargaming (similar to Magic: The Gathering, only in a full-scale battle context) and not just a simple list. Does anyone know? Cheers. --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 11:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

(EDIT) Through looking around at some actual 'fandex', I have established that it can, in fact, mean a preset army for tabletop battles. Now all that's bothering me is the etymology. Would I be right in my assumptions? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 11:58, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Looking through some of the uses, my guess is that it comes from fan + index. Deor (talk) 12:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Aha - I didn't think of that one. Makes perfect sense! --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 12:57, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there may be two different origins involved. The Workman Publishing Company publishes a series called Fandex Family Field Guides, where either decks or index (or both) may have been involved in the naming. (The series includes guides to trees, birds, U.S. presidents, and various other topics—including DC comics characters and Star Wars characters—that consist of individual rectangular cards for the various individual items treated, hinged to open out like a fan.) The wargaming uses may be derived from that, although many of them don't seem to involve actual decks of cards; so the meaning "an index of individual characters, listing their powers, appearances, and so forth" may be more prominent there, with fan = fanatic rather than fan = hand fan being taken as the first element. Deor (talk) 13:24, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

And here I thought it was Spandex as worn by fans of something. Like Tron Guy. —Angr (talk) 13:40, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! Thanks! I think I'll put a RESOLVED badge on here before the jokes start pouring in.....doh! too late...! ;) --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:20, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Another example of "fan deck," as in this photo, is a collection of color samples for paint or ink. You can readily find fan decks at decorating stores, paint shops, and printers (fan decks of the Pantone colors). --- OtherDave (talk) 19:06, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Why did Beijing used to be called Peking?

--75.15.161.185 (talk) 19:11, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Beijing#Etymology and names discusses the k ~ j change. As for p ~ b, that is because Chinese distinguishes its plosives by aspiration rather than voice. Older romanisations (specifically, Wade-Giles) distinguished the aspirated and unaspirated labial plosives as p' and p (and didn't use b at all). The pinyin system mostly used today writes these two as p and b, which is a bit misleading for English speakers unfamiliar with the system, but does not require the apostrophes. --ColinFine (talk) 19:30, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

ColinFine's answer sums up all the reasons for this change. Just to clarify: the name of Beijing has not actually changed, Chinese speakers still pronounce it the same way they have for a long time; all that has changed is the way we non-Chinese spell that sound. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:50, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

...and consequently pronounce it. HiLo48 (talk) 02:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Very true! Although for some things we still use the pronunciation based on the old spelling (Peking duck, Peking opera, Peking University) because I guess that's what everyone's gotten used to. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:13, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

So does a Chinaman say "Peking" or "Beijing"? DuncanHill (talk) 02:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

He says "北京" , or /beɪˈdʒɪŋ/ in IPA. HiLo48 (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

He says  :) rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

French speaker help

I know the word pétillant means something like 'effervescent', as in un champagne pétillant. However I have seen it used as a modifier of 'un regard', as in, 'Elle a un regard pétillant'. In this case, what does it mean? Thanks. 72.128.95.0 (talk) 20:18, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Larousse translates "avoir le regard pétillant" as "to have a twinkle in one's eyes". [5] ---Sluzzelin talk 20:41, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

See also pétiller:

(intransitive, of a liquid) to fizz, to be fizzy, bubble, bubble up

(intransitive, of fire, flames etc.) to crackle

(intransitive, of eyes) to sparkle, twinkle, flutter

Son sourire fit pétiller les yeux de son amant.

Her smile set put a twinkle into her lover's eyes (sic)

---Sluzzelin talk 00:10, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I guess one English translation that works for champagne as well as eyes is "sparkling". ---Sluzzelin talk 00:37, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Notorious

Is there a common form of modern English in which the word "notorious" doesn't mean "notable for something very negative"? I've recently found a few articles where individuals (luckily no BLPs) are said to be "notorious" for something neutral or positive (Zara Cully, for instance). --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 23:11, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

• No, not in my opinion. I'd guess here that it's simply well-meaning editors who are either replacing or using "notorious" in place of "notable". Depending on the sentence, there are a couple of alternatives available: celebrated, distinguished, eminent, famed, etc... (watch out for unintentional "peacockery", though). "Noteworthy" is a pretty good synonym, usually.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:32, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The OED lists notorious to mean notable with no negative connotations with quotes from the 90s, while similar uses are marked obsolete. But I think notorious is often just used loosely for extra emphasis, there is often a bleed across of meaning, Cully for instance being "notable for playing someone notoriously bad tempered" can easily become "notorious for playing...". meltBanana 00:29, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, 1983 edition, has it "now only in a bad sense". DuncanHill (talk) 00:39, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

That's what my dictionary says too - always negative. I agree, too, that most are simple good faith errors. I'll search for more mistaken uses next week when I feel better. Thanks, everyone. --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 00:53, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

My sense is that "notorious" always has a negative connotation, is all. Even if such meaning is generally "light", the negativity is still there. I can think of vernacular uses where the meaning isn't really negative, but the reason that the word is used that way is because it contains a negative... uh, aspect. Make sense? (ps.: I'd think that it would go without saying that we should avoid vernacular uses of words within articles.)
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

coordinate adjectives comma use

Nothing like a bit of grammatical minutiae to pass some time, eh? What do you think is better:

Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal, Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia and Primate Emeritus of Brazil.

Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal, Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil.

Or actually, now that I'm really looking at it, maybe something like:

Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal. He is Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil.

(Note that the use, or not, of harvard comma's here is completely secondary. What I'm really curious about is opinions on the comma's between "Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal".)

• Actually, (and yea, go ahead and call me a dork for answering my own post here) whatever this is, it can't be "coordinate adjectives", since the words being separated by the commas are not adjectival forms... I knew that already, it's just that I couldn't find a better title for what I was wondering about, here. I'd guess that this would fall under "general comma use".
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:35, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

To start off with, I can give you a free opinion on your inappropriate use of the apostrophe in "comma's", if you like. Wait, I think I just did.  :) But to return to the question, there should be no commas between "Brazilian, Roman Catholic, Cardinal".

To summarise: no commas and no comma's. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 23:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

heh, busted! In my defense, I had meant to change that, I just became rushed and ended up posting instead of previewing... *shrug*
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:50, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

If you put the commas in, it makes "Roman Catholic" an incidental description rather than a phrase specifying "Cardinal". That could make sense in certain circumstances (if the context were discussing a load of cardinals, some of whom were RC and others not) but aside from that (counterfactual?) context, it reads oddly. --ColinFine (talk) 00:28, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I think that what I'm getting hung up on here is the way that his nationality is being smushed into the sentence. My reading is similar to your own in that "Roman Catholic" and "Cardinal" are very close here, if not inseparable. The "Brazilian" trait, on the other hand, is rather distant to the rest of the construct. I mean, that he is Brazilian has very little, if anything, to do with his Roman Catholic Cardinal-hood; and vice-versa, of course. So... there should be something changed in the way that sentence is constructed, no?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:14, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

All three are wrong. Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933) is a Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. No commas whatsoever. (Edit to add: the comma after the date is also grammatically wrong. No commas at all can be used in this paragraph as written.) --NellieBlyMobile (talk) 01:10, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd dispute the date comment, Nellie. Standard date formats are: 19 October 1933 (British and Commonweath) and October 19, 1933 (North American). If you didn't have the comma in the latter version, you'd be butting 19 up against 1933 (October 19 1933), which looks very unorthodox, to say the least. -- Jack of Oz [your turn] 02:17, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I think everyone's suggestion that most of the commas should go is right; in particular, the comma after the date is just plain wrong, it's not a style issue. Basically, there are three things that Agnelo is:

1. a Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal
2. Archbishop Emeritus of Sao Salvador da Bahia
3. Primate Emeritus of Brazil

These things can be separated by commas, put into separate sentences, or whatever. But commas shouldn't be used within any of them.

To get rid of the ambiguity about Brazilian Roman Catholic Cardinal (is he a Roman Catholic cardinal who happens to be Brazilian, or is there a branch of Catholicism called Brazilian Roman Catholic, and he is a cardinal of that?), you can reword that bit to "A Roman Catholic cardinal of Brazilian nationality"

So basically my suggestion, similar to Nellie's, would be something along the lines of ...is a Roman Catholic cardinal from Brazil. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

That's basically where I'm at, as well. The only hang-up I have left is the apparent (and, to me, somewhat odd) aversion to commas in general which is being displayed here. I just don't get it. So, my (current) version would be: Geraldo Majella Agnelo (born October 19, 1933), is a Roman Catholic Cardinal from Brazil. He is the Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. As was already pointed out above, there are four data points here: Brazilian, RC Cardinal, Archbishop Emeritus of São Salvador da Bahia, and Primate Emeritus of Brazil. These are worked into two somewhat compact sentences, with two data points given to each sentence. Within the individual sentences the data points are then separated by commas. It seems to me that's what a comma is for, isn't it?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Common term for a modus ponens thing

1. • If Lisa is playing hockey today, she'll wear contact lenses.
   • Lisa is playing hockey today.
   • Therefore, Lisa will wear contact lenses.

(1) is a typical example of modus ponens. I'm just wondering what I can call this "series of statements" thing in prose. Here is the context I'm trying to fit it into:

“ For example, the _____ shown in (1) implies that Lisa will wear contact lenses:

1. • If Lisa is playing hockey today, she'll wear contact lenses.
   • Lisa is playing hockey today.

”

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks, rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:01, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

• "syllogism" ?
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:31, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

  Actually, in the example sentence given, using a more common word such as "argument" would seem to be much better: For example, the argument shown in (1) implies that Lisa will wear contact lenses:
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

French oe ligature

What's the numeric key sequence to type for the oe ligature? I tried all the combinations from Alt+0224 (à) to Alt+0255 (ÿ), but none of them work. --75.15.161.185 (talk) 03:36, 6 March 2011 (UTC)